I Sometimes Wonder: What's the point
by PlasticinePorter
Summary: Maggie Simpson has grown up and her family are torn apart. With everyone tied up in their own misery who will Maggie turn to for comfort?
1. Chapter 1

I Sometimes Wonder: What's the Point?

Hi. I am Margaret Jennifer Simpson. This much I know. Nobody ever calls me Margaret. I am Maggie, plain old Maggie. But, not the Maggie you used to know. I no longer crawl on the floor in a blue dress and bow, sucking a pacifier. No, I am a fully fledged, independent, thirteen year old girl.

Lisa is still here, but not for long. She's going off to Harvard next semester. So I won't be seeing her much more. I always feel that, despite our age difference, we were quite close. She always loved to teach me stuff. Whether it was: new words like "oxymoron: A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined" and "hypocrisy: The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness." I still remember them; or teaching me how to shop properly; how to find out what clothes size you are; how to play hard to get; how to kiss (she must be alright at that, she's been seeing her current boyfriend for at least nine months) and her final words of advice: How to actually study (and get an A grade guaranteed.)

Bart is here, almost. To be honest, he's a few miles out of town in Springfield jail doing two months for petty theft. He stole a few packets of cigarettes from the Kwik-e-mart, which we can no longer shop at because Apu gives us a piercing look, especially me because I fall into the evil teenager category too. He's getting out in a couple of weeks 'though.

Mom is also around, but very, very stressed. She's upset that Lisa is leaving. We know it's for good. She's always wanted to get as far away from Evergreen Terrace as possible, but nobody wants to be the first to admit it. She was in hysterics when Bart was sent to jail. She was trying to convince herself that it was a misunderstanding. She knows deep down that it wasn't. Mom also knows that she is still wasting her life. In her heart of hearts, as much as she wants to, she doesn't love Dad anymore. He doesn't excite her. Her love life is dead, and I'm sure that she hasn't had sex in months. You see, that used to be the one constant in my parents relationship. They'd have a massive fight. He'd say sorry and bring roses. They'd have amazing sex. You could hear it three rooms down the hallway. They'd both wake up feeling much happier and everything would be OK for a week or two and then the cycle would start again. But this all isn't enough for Mom anymore. She wants to be pampered. She wants to be treated. She wants to be whisked off to Paris. She wants the sort of unconditional love that you can't get from a dishwasher.

Dad, bless him, is still blissfully unaware of any of this. In fact, I don't think that he realises that there is a world outside the living room. I've always gotten on better with Dad that Bart and Lisa did. Except for when I was hitting him with a hammer, of course. Or a chainsaw. Or a spanner. You see, I didn't need as much attention as the other two. He felt he had a duty to play ball with Bart, to try and be smart for Lisa, whereas I just sat on his lap for hours and hours as he watched the super-bowl and it continued into my preteen years. I was perfectly content just to sit with him and watch the world go by.

Anyway, I am currently sitting in my room. It is the middle of summer and I have nothing to do. The world is boring. Everyone from school is on holiday, except me of course. We were going to go to Jamaica until we realised that the person trying to sell the tickets to us was a conman. So I am stuck with no friends and no holiday. So, I have decided to make myself busy by writing a diary memoir sort of thing. This is it. Thrilling, isn't it?

I was talking about my friends. Well, I'm good friends with Sangitta, Apu's daughter, one of the octuplets, but she is no longer allowed to see me out of school as I have a "criminal" for a brother. Therefore, I have taken to sitting on my own constantly. I never really fitted in at Primary school, why would I fit in at junior high?

I'm doing OK at school I guess, except for the fact that all my teachers are so shallow and care so much about grades and tests that they can't see my inner genius. So, every parent's evening, my mom and dad get told that I am a very troubled child. Well with an alcoholic for a father, a genius sister, a criminal big brother and a manic depressant mother in denial, my problems are bound to be shunted to the side a bit.

So I sit in the corner at school, alone, preoccupied, hoping, praying that I'm not turning into my mother. Recently, I have been getting really depressed. I stole some of my mom's anti-depressant pills and one time it got so bad that I locked myself in the bathroom and got out the scissors.

I brought the blade to my wrist and sunk the tip in. I made a small gash before hastily bringing it out. I'm not sure why I brought it out. I guess I don't want to go down without a fight. I'm never giving up. I want to prove the world wrong, about me, about my family and especially about everybody else. I am not part of the breed of the Satan family. The Simpsons are in a lot of pain at the moment and we do not need people telling us what a stain on Springfield's reputation we are.

Besides, since when did Springfield need us to get a bad reputation?


	2. Chapter 2

Yeah, so i finally updated. It's not a one-shot.

So today, I was sitting in my room, just as usual. Looking out of my window over Evergreen Terrace, I watched my sleepy town glisten in the afternoon sun. The kids on their bikes, women gossiping over garden fences, teenagers looking bored: this was all so familiar to my thirteen years. Amongst the small-town people was Gerald. I hated Gerald. He was the source of anguish for every one of my years. He used to have a monobrow as a baby. He would give me the evil eye when we were being taken out in our push-chairs and the mutual hatred continued into our school days. In kindergarten he would throw sand in my face, steal my things and pull my hair when nobody was watching. I am a Simpson and Simpsons fight back. However, I was always far better at getting caught than him. This rivalry did not cease in junior high. We were put in the same class and we hated it. In our most recent outburst I had thrown a pot of glue at him and he pushed me over, hard. Our teacher, the recently promoted Mrs Krabapple, decided to put a stop to our "silly behaviour" once and for all. We had to do a project on the Tudors as punishment. Together.

Suddenly, I heard the doorbell ring. It must be him, I thought. He was coming over at three to make a start on the assignment. I walked down the stairs and opened the door.

"Hi," I said, rather aggressively.

"Hey, should we get started?" He asked. We both just wanted to get it over with so we could get out of each other's company.

Then Mom walked past.

"Maggie, you've got a friend over. You should have friends over more often I'll make you some lemonade and muffins," and she went back into her dream world, fussing over her children to take her mind off more important things.

"C'mon Gerald," I said, heading back upstairs to my room. He followed. I opened the door to my room. This time he did not follow. "Aren't you coming in?" I asked.

He gulped. "Um, yeah, sure," He sounded uneasy but walked in behind me all the same. I showed him to the desk, but his mind seemed far more preoccupied with what was on the walls.

"So you like the graffiti art?" I asked, realising his eyes must have been drawn to the hundreds of stencils, doodles and other glowing images plastered on my bedroom walls.

He nodded vaguely.

I cleared some spray paint cans off the desk to make room for Gerald. "So, you wanna get started then."

"Sure whatever," he replied nonchalantly.

"Um, well here's the books. I thought that if we just sorted out what bits we're each gonna do then there's really no reason to get together before the history fair when we can put it together."

"Okay," he agreed, though he still seemed distant, his eyes transfixed on the walls.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

He continued to look dazed before suddenly perking up as though a trigger had been set off in his brain. "Did you do all this yourself?" he asked, quite unexpectedly. I wouldn't have expected an arrogant, middle-class git such as himself to appreciate the true art form of the underprivileged.

"Yeah. Well, most. That piece there was a gift from James Van-Houtan." James was the accidental offspring of the one remaining night of passion shared by my brother's best-friend's parents. He also happened to be my ex-boyfriend.

"Your ex?"

"Yeah- How did you know?"

"Oh come on Lisa," now this was the patronising old Gerald I knew. "This is a small town. People talk. Admittedly, mostly the teenage girls…" He suddenly snapped out of his train of thought (another annoying trait of his, snapping quickly between his thoughts and reality. I like to leave the two separate. Very separate.) and said, " So are we going to get started, or what?"

At that moment I could have stabbed him.


End file.
